Stra.Tech.Man (Strategy-Technology-Management): Theory and Concepts

Abstract

This volume presents some fundamental elements to the Stra.Tech.Man approach, which the author of this book tried to develop during the last few years. The main challenge of the Stra.Tech.Man approach is to synthesize interpretatively the analytical spheres of strategy, technology, and management, upon the effort of any socioeconomic organization to innovate, survive, and develop. The following chapters search to define and apply in particular the multiple applications of the Stra.Tech.Man concept. They use this approach as an analytical mechanism to perceive in the context of the current transformative phase of globalization the aspects of competitiveness, innovation, and change management. This volume includes the following chapters that apply the aspects of the Stra.Tech.Man analysis: I. The Greek firms into globalization: The Stra.Tech.Man approach Globalization is not a static and finished status quo: it is subject to a continuous transformation and restructuring. At the same time, globalization is not a timeless, a historical, and automatically homogenizing phenomenon. Every attempt of scientific understanding, interpretation, and prediction of the partial socioeconomic dynamics and developments is becoming increasingly infertile and disorientating, insofar as the rigid analytic division between the “national” and the “international” continues unaltered; globalization is a complex, dialectic, and evolutionary phenomenon. The study of globalization through the examination of the synthesizing and co-evolving incorporation of partial socioeconomic structures (social, economic and sectoral) and corporate subsystems in terms of strategy, technology, and management (“Stra.Tech.Man” triangle) constitutes a new approach for the study of the globalization process. II. Innovation in Stra.Tech.Man terms Contrary to the conventional neoclassical perspective, the approaches focusing on the evolutionary nature of the capitalist firm are probably more comprehensive in the study of innovation. This chapter attempts a theoretical refocusing in the analysis of innovation, by following a perspective of “biological” type. It highlights the synthesis of “strategy-technology-management” as the organic center that generates and re-generates the phenomenon of innovation within the socioeconomic organizations. III. Innovation in economics and management: The Stra.Tech.Man synthesis Economics and the theoretical analysis of entrepreneurship and organizational theory keep up with producing innovation theories with remarkably various forms and analyses. This chapter suggests that economics and management science can be “analytically bridged” if we reposition the phenomenon of innovation into the evolutionary/physiological Stra.Tech.Man “core” of the organization. In this theoretical perspective, the firm as a “living organism” operates as structural co-creator of the economic sectors and the socioeconomic systems that host its entrepreneurial activity. IV. Change management and innovation in Stra.Tech.Man terms In the current context of globalization’s restructuring, the concepts of change management and innovation are co-evolving. A counter-proposed theoretical perspective in terms of the evolutionary Stra.Tech.Man triangle is useful for the successful innovative action of all socioeconomic organizations. This chapter suggests the concept of change management in Stra.Tech.Man terms in five consecutive steps as a novel approach to the phenomenon of organizational change. V. Fostering micro and meso competitiveness in Stra.Tech.Man terms In the current restructuring phase of globalization, since all partial socioeconomic systems are inescapably entering an ever-deeper process of “organic restructuring,” the content of competitiveness is changing structurally. To this end, it seems that a repositioned developmental economic policy is necessary, which can focus on fostering the competitiveness of the locally operating entrepreneurial actors. This chapter proposes specifically the concept of competitiveness as a synthesis of the three fundamental micro, meso, and macro levels that create and reproduce the systemic competitiveness. It also presents the Stra.Tech.Man perspective on the proposal of creation of the Local Development and Innovation Institutes (LDIs) as useful dimensions to strengthen local business systems in combined terms of meso- and micro- competitiveness. In conclusion, the “Stra.Tech.Man approach” attempts to define a unifying and evolutionary field of research, by initiating its exploration on the inner “physiology” of the socioeconomic organization. This approach extends analytically from the micro to the meso- and macro- level of socioeconomic system dynamics and vice versa.